ayah

The building is known to have housed hundreds of destitute ayahs and amahs - as Indian and Chinese nannies were called respectively.

Saraswati Naskar, 40, another ayah who lives in a slum in Kolkata and works in a government hospital, said she had to pretend to her neighbours she now worked in a restaurant.

Upstairs, his mother and the ayah are arguing over his mother’s handbag.

For evening meals, the children usually ate earlier than their parents, with their ayah looking after them.

The vocabulary I brought to them had accreted organically, from books I read — “wizening” from D. H. Lawrence; “ayah” from Frances Hodgson Burnett; “crewelwork” from Jane Austen.